PRS Guitars has been going release crazy to celebrate 40 years in business, and for its latest trick, the Stevensville, Maryland guitar brand has expanded its range of “play-anything” high-end electric guitars with the CE 24 Special Limited Edition.
Seasoned birdwatchers might dare a guess at what that designation means. Yes, we can all see it’s a limited run – only 1,500 of them – and that 24 denotes the number of frets on the ‘board, but the big significance here is that the CE Bolt-on platform gets its first HSH electric guitar pickup configuration, hence the “Special” in the designation. And these are special.
You have give finish options to choose from. There’s Gray Burst, Smokeburst (a superior version of the former, in our opinion), Carroll Blue, McCarty Burst and, arguably, the pick of the bunch in Black Amber.
The bodies on these is solid mahogany, topped with figured maple, with maple bolt-on necks topped with rosewood fingerboards – bird inlays of course.
If you are familiar with the CE 24, you’ll be aware that it is typically a dual-humbucker instrument, with a pair of PRS 85/15s at the neck and bridge, both of which are controlled by a volume, tone with a push/pull function for coil-splitting, and a three-way pickup selector.
With a PRS NS-01 single-coil in the middle, this bolt-on can present you with some of the tones you might associate with the five-way switching of, well, Fender Stratocasters and their ilk.
Chuck Lenderking, product manager, PRS Guitars, says they might just have bit more warmth, presumably thanks to that generous hunk of mahogany and maple.
“With the CE 24 Special, you get all the iconic tones you expect from a CE,” says Lenderking. “But now, with the middle pickup from the Modern Eagle V added to the mix, you can easily dial in the classic scooped tones typically associated with traditional 3-pickup/5-way switch-equipped guitars.
“Thanks to the tonal range of the 85/15 humbuckers, the CE 24 Special offers even more warmth and versatility than some historic models with a similar setup.”
As with the other CE 24s, this has a Pattern Thin neck, silky satin finish. The hardware is on point. That patented PRS tremolo and Phase III locking tuner combo is rock solid.
Other vital statistics worth noting include the 25” scale length, the 10” fingerboard radius, and the price? These are retailing for $2,749, which is not a bad price for a pro-quality electric guitar like this.
That price includes a premium gig bag. For more details, head over to PRS Guitars. This release follows the refresh of John Mayer's SE Silver Sky, which welcomed four new finish options for the rosewood fingerboard model, with some classic rosewood colourways migrating to the maple line. You can read more about the 2025 refresh of the SE Silver Sky here. TL:DR? The colours on those were inspired by American fashion.
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